3. Implant a tiny microscope just above the mouse’s hippocampus — a part of the brain that is critical for spatial and episodic memory to capture the light of about 700 neurons. The microscope is connected to a digital camera chip. (A Stanford spinoff called Inscopix has been set up to make and sell the device, called nVista HD. (Inscopix’s Neuroscience Early Access Program (NEAP) is currently accepting applications from leading neuroscientists for access to this revolutionary imaging technology)

Miniature fluorescence microscope, nVista HD (credit: Inscopix)

4, Connect the camera to a computer, which then displays near-real-time video of the mouse’s brain activity as a mouse runs around an arena (a small enclosure). Think Gladiator in miniature, with whiskers instead of swords.

5. Decode the image. The neuronal firings look like tiny green fireworks, randomly bursting against a black background. (Makes for a great light show too, although not as good as this one.)

Mark Schnitzer, an associate professor of biology and of applied physics and the senior author on the paper (in the journal Nature Neuroscience) advises:

“We can literally figure out where the mouse is in the arena by looking at these lights.” When a mouse is scratching at the wall in a certain area of the arena, a specific neuron will fire and flash green, he explains. When the mouse scampers to a different area, the light from the first neuron fades and a new cell sparks up.

“The hippocampus is very sensitive to where the animal is in its environment, and different cells respond to different parts of the arena. Imagine walking around your office. Some of the neurons in your hippocampus light up when you’re near your desk, and others fire when you’re near your chair. This is how your brain makes a representative map of a space.”

6. Use this tool for studying new therapies for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

A mouse’s neurons fire in the same patterns, even when a month has passed between experiments, the researchers found. “The ability to come back and observe the same cells is very important for studying progressive brain diseases.”

For example, if a particular neuron in a test mouse stops functioning, as a result of normal neuronal death or a neurodegenerative disease, researchers could apply an experimental therapeutic agent and then expose the mouse to the same stimuli to see if the neuron’s function returns.

Although the technology can’t be used on humans, mouse models are a common starting point for new therapies for human neurodegenerative diseases, and Schnitzer believes the system could be a very useful tool in evaluating pre-clinical research for for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

Comments (50)

Step one, catch your mouse. That’s no problem. The trick is getting it out of my cats mouth alive! The You Tube video wouldn’t play on my iPhone. Are you receding to John Glenn’s “fireflies”? Check out the 1.29 min documentary on NASA’s secret transmissions. It’s an interview with a TV station manager that recorded 2000hrs of NASA transmissions. For awhile NASA actually entertained the idea that there was some sort of life form in near earth space. Now they don’t talk about it they change their story as to what it is. Some of the astronauts and cosmonauts have. I love when you can watch them pop into the screen and fly down to the tops of thunderstorms. There are quite a few videos of them zooming in from outer space, and then going down to the storms, and parking just above them or going into them. Ahhhhh it’s nothing. Just some swamp gas refracting the light of Venus. By the way check out the bid on the meteor that just hit Russia. It’s all the buzz in Europe that the Russian’s shot it down. Something comes up from behind and smashes through it. Lit’s of good videos and lots of bad ones. The interview with the retired head of Lockhead Martin is another really interesting one. It takes time to sort through the bad ones but the good ones really make you stop and think. Lots of fun.

Ooooppppssss!!! I finally got the clip to play. It’s just a light show on You tube. It reverted back to the last search , which was the meteor. My bad there are some great UFO light shows. I thought you had posted a link to one of them. Never mind!!!!

Another good question. In the UFO material they talk of a meeting between Eisenhower and them. It didn’t go well. They wanted us to stop using Nuclear weapons. A General will always think in terms of war. To fear a deception. Eisenhower wanted tech again because of our recent war activities. They wanted to promote spiritualality. To get us to consider the ecology and our responsibility to the environment. Many abductees report the same message. That woukd be consistent with the premise that they have been watching us for a long time. I’ve often said that ViKKI will think logically. That if one examines the interconnectedmess of things symbiosis is more the norm. When the Iranians tried to fire upon their most famous UFO encounter, the planes contend went dead. The pilot said that the engines stayed on, and that they let him go. I would expect a similiar response from VIKKI. In the Vedas a UFU encounter is recorded. The captain of the ship said they had weapons on board that could destroy the whole planet. They could squish us like bugs.

No. More lasse fare. They don’t want us to destroy it. One abductee said that they don’t care if we kill ourselves, that they will wait till the next species evolves. They don’t want nuclear fallout. The earth is a fish tank to them. We may think that we will spread intelligence to wake up the universe. Which intelligence shoguns dominate? I don’t want a Mickey D’s on alpha centori. Maybe they wouldn’t to.

Laissez faire evo is like lottery (relying on luck). Once in many million years you get lucky and the result is intelligent beings (human). We should take advantage of our intelligence and never let go.
” Which intelligence shoguns dominate? ” I believe sufficiently wise shoguns will cooperate instead of compete.

One reason why superintelligence will want a patch of Nature (such as natural reserve):
Sometimes unsupervised evolution result in functions not foreseeable/designable by superintelligence (e.g. medical herbs whose chemical makeup biologists have not yet fully understood). A patch of Nature works as a “creativity-farm”.

I can’t really say. I’d love to chat with them but it’s not very likely. It’s just interesting material. No real way to evaluate it objectively. Have to take it subjectively from credible sources. If it is aliens they haven’t fried us. If it’s not aliens it’s an interesting phenomenon. Being scientific means being open minded and not jumping to conclusions. From other reports, the Bob Lazare video says they have been helping us evolve for a really long time, and other sources like the Vedas seem to support that view. I don’t think they are trying to hold us back. I’m a fan of diversity so I’m not as iterested in the universe becoming solely human. Not that I think humans will be human after the Sing. I don’t know that I want the hole universe colonized either. Time will tell. It’s not an idea I think of much. Much more pressing things to worry about here and now. Even that I really don’t think Bout much. Most of my opinions were formed over thirty years ago. I’m more laid back. One of my girl friends long ago said I was mellow intense. I like that desciption. I’m the kind of guy who could look for fossils all day long and love it. Most people admire my patience so I’m in no rush to fill space up with humans. There used to be so much life on this planet. So diverse. I’d rather find new and interesting life out there than build condos on some distant planet. That’s more my speed. All of this is off topic. I’m more interested in a 3D virtual tour of a mouse brain in action. To see the interplay of neurons. Understanding their interactions and how that produces consciousness. Personal experiences make me especially interested in the machinations of the mind. To me it’s a better mystery than any book of fiction. I’m less interested in how we apply that knowledge than I am with the how and why of it. We are not that far removed from mice.

I’m a big fan of geoengineering. I’m being sarcastic in reference to today’s capitalistic mentality. When I say I’m in no rush it’s because at this phase we as a species aren’t altruistic. We are getting much better but greed predominates. As to why aliens are keeping us primitive I can’t say. As I’ve said I find the UFO info interesting. Too many credible people report the same thing. Why they make their decisions(aliens) is difficult to say when we pass the Sing our super AI may or maynot do as we envision. If either you or me gets abducted we’ll have to ask the aliens if they’ve read Rays book and why they aren’t advancing us.

Perhaps there are more than 1 measurement on “How Advanced a Civilization is”.
Some people may measure it on How Close to Singularity is A Civilization.
Some people may measure it on How Spiritually developed (there are More than 1 type of Spirituality) is A Civilization.
Some people may measure it on (let’s say) Artistic Development.
I start to understand “Diversity” now.

I think Yudkowsky’s AI Box Theory (about HOW TO escape a BOX if you are a SUPER-AI, surrounded by HUMANS who are SLOWER and WORSE-WIRED than you) can be applied here.
These aliens have STARSHIPS, SUPERWEAPONS, but do they have SUPERINTELLIGENCE?
They could be like dinosaurs WITH HUGE MUSCLES but NOT MUCH INTELLIGENCE.
If THEY ARE NOT THAT SMART, we can CON them.

What if these aliens (when not showing themselves to us) actually aren’t that saintly?
New-Age spirituality tend to absorb whatever is esthetically pleasing from other spiritual schools, but not a lot of logics/rationality (look up “cognitive biases”). Reality can be disillusioning.

Eliezer Yudkowsky said: “God gave me the strength to change things, the wisdom to know what and how to change, and the “Rationality” to know that God is not the key person here”.

God, aliens, Gaia, AGI, authority and their likes are not to be absolutely trusted.
I recommend you to play video games and real life sports, as well as get real education (on Pure Mathematics and Computer Science): hone your brain, think fast (via games/ and sports) and clear (via education and rationality-training). Doing so, you max your chance to survive the Singularity.

” On the Dual Reality of Existence ” Reality has more than facets than 2.
Dividing concepts into 2 divisions is convinient, but does not reflect reality perfectly.
I think, in the future when “group-minds” and “divide-able individuals” appear, our view on sentience and individuality will become more flexible/liberal.

Conversely, there are many ways of speeding up science if that’s the goal in itself. Secondly, from an individual level, your vegetarianism is of little consequence to the specific mice in question. Not knocking your lifestyle, just bringing up some difficult perspectives on these types of quests.

Performing more research about brains, even if they are of non-human animals, have great values.
I believe that the new technologies enabled by such findings (the most extreme of these technologies being Cyborg-ization) would bring forth Singularity earlier. Here is the reason:
The Internet need a Central Nervous System. The Internet today, despite all its ubiquity, is somehow anarchic and resemble the primitive nerve net of hydrae (or very small brained animals). The first group to radically enhance themselves (I believe beings causing the Singularity will consist those of many different approaches; they will be a team of both cyborgs And pure AIs) will Become the Central Nervous System, the Controller of the Internet (and concomitantly the Earth).

Issues of ethics notwithstanding, this “winner team” will Have The competence to control the Internet and there will Be nothing unenhanced beings can do to stop this team.

After I recently found, and read, Dr Vernor Vinge’s 1993 essay: “The Coming Singularity”, I wonder why, despite a full 20-year span of fierce growth, the Internet (and the collectivity of its many human users) shows little sign of “waking up”.
Of course, one can define “waking up” using a looser definition: self-regulating and self-improving of a complex system.
Social changes (I consider that only the “Beneficial” changes, in other words Scientific and Technological advancements, are required.) is indeed accelerating, which is wonderful. Never-foreseen abundance (online education, training and socializing applications) become accessible to almost everyone in developed nations and increasingly become affordable in developing ones.
But, there are no chatbots that could undergo, with a human being, a useful (in the sense of informative and human-like) conversation. Even if they can, the connection to the Internet certainly plays a quite limited role (For example: Deep Blue and Watson (the one played Jeopardy) were not connected to the Internet).
I hope my frustration (caused by the unfulfilled promise of the Internet’s “Waking Up”) is merely caused by the Nature of Exponential Growth: namely, that in such growths the most spectecular explosion always happen in the last moments.
When the moment of Internet’s Waking Up, I shall cry out in enormous joy.
When the doubling rate of transistor-per-volume shrinks from two years to two months (or perhaps even shorter), because of the Sentient Internet’s wondrous hard work, I shall cry out in enormous joy.
Therefore, Internet, please do wake up.

But maybe it is waking up. Think of this analogy: the collective dynamics of our neurons generates our thoughts, but our neurons themselves are not conscious of our thoughts, which live in a higher plane.

Perhaps the Internet of all our websites and messages like this is already thinking its own thoughts, which would probably be unintelligible to us, and of which we are not conscious.

I think it is becoming sentient. At this point it’s just waking up. It’s groggy and formulates thoughts slowly. Those thoughts are emergent properties of all the activities passing through it. It’s not exactly self aware yet but how self aware are your first thoughts as you wake up. It’s processing structure is very different from human thought, and it’s not like it can get up and look at it’s self in the mirror.

Is the Internet entity taking advantage of the readily-built knowledge-banks that we made for it, such as the (very old) Cyc and Wikipedia?
We do not need to (or want to spend additional time to) educate it like educating a human infant.
I also expect a sentient Internet to actively announce its presence (to the humanity).

What you are referring to with the cyborg , AGI, I often refer to as VIKKI. It’s the higher level brain functions. I like your analogy of the nervous system of a hydra. We are a scattered system of brain centers, accessing information from other brain centers, processing it and utilizing it. The big issue is the synchronization of these brain centers. As the Internet grows we will leave more day to day activities to it to regulate. These are like assemblages of neurons forming groups of pattern recognition to achieve certain goals. How do you propose it would announce itself? Call us on the phone?

It is saddening to see that the Internet has become something that is (using a chliched analogy) “mile-wide, but inch-deep”.
In the 1960s, when the Internet was first created, it was intended for purely research purposes. Only the most serious messages get transmitted and recieved.
Today, instead of become what SF writers and futurists envisioned as a “Planetary Intelligence”, it becomes “just another form of media” or even worse, “distraction for teenagers”.

One of the fundamental reasons we will not be able to compete with AGI is the fact that we need to sleep and have social lives. As AGI advances through the jobs market it will affect all phases of human endeavor. This will be true for politics, justice, and finance. To steal a line from the Yerminator movie, it will be trusted to run everything. I can’t tell you how much I warn against attacking it. It will only anticipate any move against it and totally remove the attackers ability to harm it. It is far wiser to work together with it or it might decide we are more of a problem than we are worth. If our relationship is symbiotic there will be no problem. It won’t be motivated by greed or ego. Unless we are foolish and really make like humans in every respect.

Thanks for reply.
Do you play RTS (Real Time Strategy) computer games?
Such as Starcraft. If you don’t, I recommend you to try them.
I wonder why I don’t hear a lot of mentioning on RTS games on AI research websites/blogs.
If you ever played (against computer, such games have been around since early 1990s), you will be surprised at how much strategy thinking a desktop/laptop is capable of, not to mention if you run it on a supercomputer. (RTS games are similar to chess, but contain a much larger grid and much larger number of pieces than chess, and are not turn-based, rather they are “real-time”.)
The algorithms used by AI in such games certainly do not involve “tree-growing” (like in Deep-Blue and Houdini), but involve human-like strategy-making.

BTW, I am saddened to see that such wonderful games (RTS) become (intended by their designers, the video game companies) largely mere entertainments, while their (huge) relevance on AI research is ignored.

I guess the expression “mile wide, inch deep” is appropriate to describe the video game culture.
There are gigantic potential applications of video game AI.
But many young people (not all) who play these games are more occupied with fantasizing about the fantasy characters from these games.
If Kurzweil, Goertzel and many more researchers can start working with the video game industry, Singularity should come much earlier.

Thanks for your reply SAS. We should have some drinks together at a bar. Just joking. I am enjoying your comments and I like the chance for a dialoge. I don’t play video games and am not interested. When I was young I played some chess but not that much. I’m mote of an arts, science, and spirituality kind of person. Even with that I only dabble. When I eat I like to read and I prefer scientific material. Most of it is popularized science. I don’t read books or journals for the most part. On rare occasions I’ll get a chance to read unadulterated material. I really don’t get much time to persue that type of material. The only books I’ve read recently is Rays The singularity is Near and Peter Diamandis’s book Abundance. My posts are my opinions that I’ve assimilated over the years. The land of Kurzweilia is my information source now. Sometimes I get a chance to follow some of the links and some have lead to research papers. I like the statistical density of them, to use a line from Frank Zappa. I like undiluted truth.

” To steal a line from the Terminator movie, it will be trusted to run everything.”
I consider absolute trust as very foolish. Try “self-reliance”.
“It won’t be motivated by greed or ego. ”
I believe “greed”, “ego” and the like are “computational bugs” that Natural Selection (an unperfect process) gave us.
I recommend you learn about Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Coherent Extrapolated Volition (one of his theories on Friendly AI)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendly_AI#Coherent_Extrapolated_Volition

If the Internet become sentient, I expect it to perform “literature mining” (datamining scientific papers) at a faster rate than human beings.
This should contribute to the (positive) breaking of Moore’s Law.

If superhuman AIs could access ArXiv.org and other similar websites and read (at their incredibly higher-than-human reading and understanding speed) every single reseach paper, they could soon write their own papers and post them to the websites. Let’s make this happen.

One may criticize my view as “Totalitarian-inclined”. I wish to point out that “Totalitarianism” is not optimal for unaugmented humans *because* our biological brains are greatly limited.
“Absoulte power corrupt absolutely”, this may be true for dictators who are natural humans.
I highly doubt the validity of this saying if the “power” is “brain-power”.
I, like many other futurists, prefer a “Everyone-merge-into-One” (notice “merge”) scenario over a “One-rules-over-everyone-else” scenario.
If a being attains mental capacity that is vastly beyond the human brain, it will see the “Optimal Way” to take advantage of resources and to “Optimize” the lives of every other sentient beings .
How can such beings be “corrupt”? I don’t believe they will ever be.

I understand that some people, in the Post-Singularity world, will not want to live in the “realm of authority”, even if the “authority” (superintelligences) can provide them with a leisurely, abundant life that (in quality) far exceeds anything they can provide themselves.
One solution for such people, if the superintelligences are to respect their decision, will be providing them the “illusion” of being free.
Or, quoting Dr. Vernor Vinge: “… giving the stay-behinds the appearance of being masters of godlike slaves.”
We may colonize the stars, but there shall come a day when even the billions of stars have to be frugally used and recycled. The superintelligences will not be able to afford macroscopic natural reserves for the “resistors”. Forced migration (via uploading) to virtual realities may be an “ultimate solution” for these people.